NCAA will cease role in sales of athlete memorabilia

Aug. 9, 2013

Written by

Dan Wolken

USA Today

NCAA President Mark Emmert said on a conference call Thursday the e-commerce site ShopNCAASports.com, which was at the center of a Twitter controversy earlier this week led by college basketball commentator Jay Bilas, would no longer sell team-related merchandise.

“There’s no compelling reason the NCAA should essentially be reselling paraphernalia from institutions,” Emmert said. “I can’t speak to why we entered into that enterprise, but it’s not something that’s appropriate for us and we’re going to exit it.”

The online NCAA shop, which is copyrighted by Fanatics Retail Group, drew significant attention this week when Bilas typed names of college athletes such as Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel and Clemson’s Tajh Boyd into the site’s search function and got the replica jerseys of those players to come up.

USA Today found the same thing could be done when Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron, Ohio State quarterback Braxton Miller and Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray’s names were typed into the search box. You could plug in former Buckeyes quarterback Terrelle Pryor, who was suspended in 2011 after selling his own memorabilia, and his old OSU jersey would appear.

The NCAA released a statement from Mark Lewis, its executive vice president for championships and Alliances, that read: “Moving forward, the NCAA online shop will no longer offer college and university merchandise. In the coming days, the store’s website will be shut down temporarily and reopen in a few weeks as a marketplace for NCAA championship merchandise only. After becoming aware of issues with the site, we determined the core function of the NCAA.com fan shop should not be to offer merchandise licensed by our member schools.”

Although the site is copyrighted by Fanatics Retail Group, it is branded with the NCAA’s official logo and links prominently to NCAA.com, the NCAA’s commercial website.

Also today, the NCAA’s top two committees — including the Division I Board of Directors — began formal talks about how to best govern the 348 schools that comprise its top division.

“I think we’re at a crossroads, that’s clear,” said Lou Anna Simon, president of Michigan State and chair of NCAA Executive Committee. “We’re at a crossroads, and the sense in the room was that people want to try and make it a much better organization.”

Simon, Emmert and Nathan Hatch, president of Wake Forest and chair of the Division I Board of Directors, spoke exclusively with The Indianapolis Star after their meetings in downtown Indianapolis finished.

The meetings were part of what is expected to be a yearlong process to decide how to make significant changes to the way the NCAA is run.

In July, the commissioners of the major Division I conferences called for substantial change. At issue is the ability of the richest athletics programs to set policy without smaller Division I programs stopping them because of financial concerns.

Emmert announced he would call a summit of Division I schools in January. The meetings this week confirmed the intent to make changes, Emmert said.

“There is a strong sense of urgency to move the association forward,” he said. “There is a deep concerted effort on behalf of the board and the membership to find ways to get the Division I governance system to work better.”

The NCAA currently is fighting multiple lawsuits regarding the names and likenesses of college athletes. One of its co-defendants in one case, Collegiate Licensing Co. — the nation’s leading collegiate trademark licensing and marketing firm — has denied the link between an athlete’s jersey and number and their individual likeness. On Monday lawyers for CLC wrote, the firm denies “that it has allowed former players’ indicia of identity to be utilized in connection with sales of replica and actual jerseys and other apparel offered for sale” and “CLC denies that uniform numbers are ‘indicia of identity’ for student-athletes.”

Steve Berman, a lawyer helping to represent former college athletes in two ongoing lawsuits pertaining to the use of college athletes’ names and likenesses — one of which has the NCAA, video game manufacturer Electronic Arts and CLC as the defendants — told USA Today of the NCAA: “They realize that the spotlight is on them, that’s for sure.”

However, he pointed out the NCAA’s move Thursday unlikely is to have much of an impact on the broader market for college sports merchandise, including the availability of jerseys with current star players’ numbers on them. He cited the recent sequence of events involving EA’s college football game, in which the NCAA announced it was not renewing its licensing contract with EA for the game and then two days later, more than 150 colleges, conferences and bowl games approved a three-year deal with EA for it.

“The NCAA did the same thing with EA, and the schools are still going ahead,” Berman said. “I think you’ll see the same kind of conduct here.”

Emmert said his understanding was the NCAA itself made no money off the sale of that merchandise, but its website essentially was used as an aggregator for schools to sell it. Still, Emmert said in the future that site will only carry merchandise with the NCAA logo, not team jerseys with players’ numbers.

“I think the business of having the NCAA sell those kind of goods is a mistake,” he said. “It was inappropriate for us to be in that business, and I can certainly see how that would be seen as hypocritical.”